Tara Gilesbie
Tara Laidlaw (pen-name Tara Gilesbie), writing as XXXbloodyrists666XXX, is the primary author of infamous work of fanfiction, My Immortal. Background Gilesbie wrote My Immortal ''under the profile name XXXbloodyrists666XXX on fanfiction.net. She resides in Dubai , a principality part of the United Arab Emirates. Before writing ''My Immortal, she also shared that the band Good Charlotte made a great impact on her life, as their song entitled "Hold On" convinced her not to commit suicide after a recent breakup from her boyfriend. She began writing My Immortal ''circa 2006 and updated the story on a regular basis, however there were often large gaps between updates where she either claimed that the flames of the reviewers caused her to "slit muh rists" and had to go to the hospital for recovery, went on extended vacations or was just too "bizzy". The last update was made in mid-2007 before going on a trip to England and was then abandoned, where it is assumed she grew out of her goth phase. Writing Style As seen in the writing in ''My Immortal, Gilesbie possesses a very distinct writing style, many of which probably reflect her personality. For instance, she chose to write her work mostly in text-talk (to the point that it is difficult for the reader to decipher her words). She also includes a large quantity author's notes, all of which are of great length and request that "prepz and posrs" stop 'flaming' her work. She would also frequently threaten to slit her wrists for each bad review or threaten to not update the fanfic unless she got a certain amount of good reviews, e.g.: "AN: STOP flaming! if u flam it menz ur a prep or a posr! Da only reson Dumbledeor swor is coz he had a hedache ok an on tup of dat he wuz mad at dem 4 having sexx! PS im nut updating umtil I get five good revoiws!" One more side note of Gilesbie's writing style is her habit of experimenting with the English language, adverbs in particular, some some examples being "sexily", "suicidally" and "gothically". Her poor spelling demonstrated throughout her writing and inability to maintain continuity with character names implies a lack of grasp on correct English grammar. However, it can be inferred that either she or Raven has read The Fellowship of the Ring due to the name "Tom Satan Bombodil", which could be a misspelled version of "Tom Bombadil", from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Troll Controversy A frequently asked question amongst reader of My Immortal ''is whether or not Gilesbie was an authentic author, mainly due to the poor spelling and content in the story. Some argue that the story has too many flaws to be written completely seriously. It reads like a list of things a troll writer would do: frequently misspell words in an almost organised manner, text chatting, random/unexplained sex scenes, etc. On the other hand, to negate the troll theory, one must take into the account of the many things that are a part of ''My Immortal. ''The trolling author would have to create the personality of Tara Gilesbie, manage her many accounts (she has had other accounts besides the one that is now deleted from fanfiction.net), and her password(s), and not to mention take the time and dedication to write the forty-four long chapter story itself. Besides Tara Gilesbie, the troll author would also have to remember the persona of Raven, Tara Gilesbie's friend. As in Tara's case, the troll would have to manage Raven's account(s), password(s), ''and ''write her stories, unless there was a second troll involved. Raven's stories would have to coincide with Tara's stories, because they had a falling out. Both writers have chapters in their fan fictions in which they both wrote (or killed) off the avatars in their stories based off the other writer's personalities and vice-versa. How old was Tara when she wrote ''My Immortal? In a Youtube video, Tara talks about starting High School as freshmen students. This video was posted on June 12th, 2009, so she would be fourteen at that time. My Immortal ''was written in 2006, so Tara was probably just 11/12 when she wrote it and is backed up by the fact that she mainly uses text talk and wouldn't have had a lot of knowledge about sex and writing sex scenes, which would explain any unrealistic content. As seen by her Facebook accountLaidlaw, T. (2008, 8 6). ''Tara Laidlaw Facebook. Retrieved 1 9, 2015, from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tara.a.laidlaw, she is 19 years old. References Category:Real World‎